Film Theory
Horror, Genre, Gender
“What the action film mystifies, the horror
film confesses”
(Carol Clover, film theorist)
Horror has occupied center stage in film theory.
It has inspired some of the key ideas concerning cinematic gaze and signifiers
of gender role. The site of suspenseful pleasure in watching horror
has been linked to tension set up by looking from the opposed perspectives
of monster and victim. Accordingly, a major role of the on-screen
protagonist in horror narratives may be to register anticipation and, by
so doing, to become a fearful watcher. The protagonist’s watching,
in turn, provides an opportunity for the film’s audience to vicariously
experience the thrill of primal apprehension. The protagonist’s watching
of the fate of other characters engenders anxiety about their own impending
fate. Implicitly, the audience that watches the film’s protagonist
is thereby led to contemplate what might ultimately befall them also.
In addition to being observers of on-screen threats
to others, audiences of horror films ever since Hitchcock’s 1960 film “Psycho”
have themselves also been deliberately assaulted from the screen.
As Hitchcock revealingly claimed, if one “designed a picture correctly
in terms of its emotional impact, the Japanese audience would scream at
the same time as the Indian audience.” However, such a purely technical
analysis appears to emphasize the universality of shock over cultural specificity
of what constitutes the uncanny. For instance, despite numerous precedents
that established females as the designated victims in horror, by 1993 it
was nonetheless possible for a battered woman “Nami Tsuchiya” (Kimiko Yo)
– rather than a male predator – to be the one slashing through the shower
curtain to kill a man taking a shower, in Takashi Ishii’s “Nudo no yoru”
(“A Night In Nude”). The key factor here, of course, is that by the
1990s a cinematic dialog between gender and the portrayal of victimization
had eventually allowed Japanese horror to escape the confines of “pinku”
exploitation and embrace the possibility of full-on female vengeance.
Nevertheless, there are structural similarities
between Western and Asian horror productions that appear to offer some
support for Hitchcock’s contention. Perhaps more than most film genres,
horror seems to have attained a measure of intercultural status.
Unlike many other low-genre Asian films, there is a definite Western market
for contemporary Japanese horror. Recent films that launched the
current genre conventions of J-Horror such as “Joyû-rei” (“Don’t
Look Up,” 1996) and “Ringu” (“Ring,” 1998) returned to traditions
of the uncanny as portrayed in “The Exorcist” or “The Omen” rather than
emulating the then-popular Hollywood “slasher” sub-genre, as director Hideo
Nakata has observed. Nakata’s “Ringu” (1998) and Shimizu’s “Ju-on”
(“The Grudge,” 2003) are particularly noteworthy since they have inspired
direct Hollywood re-makes helmed by the original Japanese directors, as
well as Japanese-language sequels. Other re-make projects include
Nakata’s “Kaosu” (“Chaos,” 1999) and “Honogurai mizu no soko kara” (“Dark
Water,” 2002) or Kurosawa’s “Kairo” (“Pulse,” 2001).
There also appears to be general interplay between
the narrative and cinematic conventions of certain popular American horror
films such as “The Sixth Sense,” “The Blair Witch Project,” “The Mothman
Prophecies” or “Control” and Asian titles such as Chi-Leung Law’s “Ye do
hung gaan” (“Inner Senses,” 2002) the “Honto ni atta” video series, Oxide
and Danny Pang’s “Jian gui” (“The Eye,” 2002) and Ryuhei Kitamura’s “Alive”
(2002). Commercially influential Hollwood teen slasher films such
as the “Scream” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer” franchises have inspired
a number of Asian narrative imitations such as Hitoshi Ishikawa’s “Shuudan
satsujin club” (“Big Slaughter Club,” 2003), Gi-hun Kim and Jong-seok Kim’s
“Zzikhimyeon jukneunda” (“The Record,” 2000) or In-soo Kim’s “Haebyeoneuro
gada” (“Bloody Beach,” 2000).
Although the form and conventions of film horror
may therefore seem increasingly intercultural, the ubiquity of cinematic
elements such as gaze, eyes and anticipatory looking need not unconditionally
suggest the nature of the threat to be looked at. Much Western theorizing
about horror films is inspired by psychoanalysis, and not surprisingly
ascribes the wellsprings of filmic threat to coded sexual differences.
Thematically, horror is thought to adhere to situations involving either
submission to female power or the threat of sexual indeterminacy.
In keeping with this perspective, the enervated samurai in Kaneto Shindô’s
“Onibaba” (1964), for example, are ambushed and killed, their bodies discarded
into a bottomless hole that serves as a clear symbol of the horrific power
of female sexuality. Indeed, one alternate title for “Onibaba” is
“The Hole.” The case for sexual indeterminacy might be made in the
example of Toshiyo Fujita’s “Shurayikihime” (“Lady Snowblood,” 1973).
Although not conventionally regarded as a horror text, references are made
in this film to “Yuki Kashima’s” status as a potentially demonic “child”
or “blizzard” from the “netherworld.” Cover artwork for various video
versions of this film consistently combine phallic imagery of “Yuki’s”
sword grip with abject bloodying of her white kimono. One release
adds the boundary-violating injunctions to “Feel like a beast,” “Become
a beast,” “Die a beast.” Meiko Kaji’s unmatched realization of “Yuki”
seems the exemplar of film theory’s powerful phallic woman – conspicuous
possessor of the gaze, master of the sword, coldly beautiful, flawlessly
poised, unapproachably ruthless. Were her serial vengeance killings
to be narrated from the perspective of their victims, comparison with slasher
texts might be suggested. The character of “Masami” (Sumiko Mikami)
in Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s “Kichiku dai enkai” (“Banquet of the Beasts,” 1997)
uses sexuality as a means of overt control over her male gang members,
leading to paranoia, madness and violence – the imagined horrific consequences
of uncontrolled female sexual power. This graphic film also directly
equates such expression of female power with literal male castration.
The question is not whether such readings can
be applied to horror, but whether they exhaust the range of possible gender
meanings. More specifically, given that the recent wave of “post-Ringu”
Asian horror films may be more strongly influenced by Japanese cultural
and narrative emphases than by Hollywood horror conventions, differing
readings of gender construction may also be invited. Do women act
and react within Asian horror texts in ways assigned to female characters
by Western film theory? Common sense – and cultural awareness – suggest
not always. Additionally, might other themes such as obligation,
honor or loss of identity occasionally trump sexuality as the locus of
the uncanny in Japanese horror narratives in a manner analogous to certain
sub-genres of Asian female action films?
Western film theory proposes that both horror
and action film involve preliminary extremes of suffering by the protagonist
that are resolved by retaliatory vengeance. The theme of vengeance
reverberates through female roles in both Japanese horror and action films,
from Kaneto Shindô’s folklore-inspired “Yabu no naka no kuroneko”
(“The Black Cat in the Bush,” 1968) to Hajime Hashimoto’s post-modern fable
of yakuza comeuppance “Gokudô no onna-tachi: Jôen” (“Gang Wives:
Flame of Love,” 2005). The latter title features a convention-subverting
merger of traditional and modern notions of honor and revenge embodied
by the characters of Reiko Takashima and Aya Sugimoto. For Western
cinema, on the other hand, a defining feature is that such narratives are
typically differentiated by gender, and are separately experienced by female
and male characters in horror and action, respectively.
On these grounds, Western film horror might be
theorized as an approximation to a “women’s action film.” The slasher
film narrative, in particular, is commonly read as a “hero plot” constructed
around the suffering of the principal female protagonist (the “Final Girl”)
and her ultimately successful confrontation with a monstrous enemy.
The typical absence of graphic sexual assault in Western horror is often
considered sufficient to demarcate this from female vengeance plots, and
graphic sexual assault is indeed often found in Japanese female vengeance
titles. In films such as Daisuke Yamanouchi’s “Senketsu no kizuna:
Kichiku reipuhan o shinkan saseta shimai” (“Blood Sisters,” 2000), this
can be foregrounded to such an extent that it overwhelms the vengeance
narrative and becomes, in effect, justified by (rather than justification
for) the eventual retaliation. Perhaps the theoretical conventions
of separation entertained by Western film theory conceal the remnants of
a broader cinematic and cultural reluctance to directly embrace the stark,
primal underpinnings of horror – sex and violence – in an effort to remain
above the low genres of exploitation.
In Western film theory, violence in horror has
been treated as a symbolic alternative for sexual assault (and, perhaps,
for sexuality more generally), leading some influential theorists such
as Carol Clover to propose that the slasher film delivers the “opened body”
in a fetishized manner that portrays expressed female desire as monstrous
and post-coital death as the cost of illicit sex. These are obviously
different thematic concerns than those of the female vengeance narrative,
despite superficial similarity in plot construction. Another key
difference identified by Clover is that the audience experience of horror
largely ceases at the point the Final Girl unmasks or directly confronts
her assailant. This phase typically follows relatively familiar conventions
of action “muscle drama” in which the successful combat of the Final Girl
closely resembles that of the typical male action hero. From this
perspective, her victory restores the normal patriarchal, “phallocentric”
order as well as delivering her into the “adult” world. It is not
as evident that these arguments apply to the more troubling vengeance narrative.
When consideration of such subtleties is turned
to Japanese horror films, a number of differences seem evident. First,
Asian action films in general have long privileged female protagonists
in ways that Western action films have not, suggesting there may be fewer
obvious points of demarcation with horror. Both might have an essentially
comparable address with respect to gender. Second, the female vengeance
film in Japanese cinema is not as clearly bracketed off from horror as
a separate (and lower) sub-genre. Takashi Ishii’s horror hit “Freeze
Me” (2000) seems clearly related to “Ms. 45” while Ishii’s own filmography
includes both the superior “Girls With Guns” title “Kuro no tenshi” (“Black
Angel,” 1997) and its sequel, as well as the screenplay for the violently
misogynistic “Shiryo no wana” (“Evil Dead Trap,” 1988). Takashi Miike
brought his extensive experience directing masculine action films to craft
“Ôdishon” (“Audition,” 1999) – arguably one of the most disturbing
female vengeance films ever made. Finally, within its recognized
censorship limits, Japanese low genre cinema has been generally quite frank
in its depiction of sexuality – both typical and aberrant. There
may be fewer grounds for cultivating audience expertise in reading coded
sexuality as found in typical Western horror, and many Japanese horror
titles could easily be described as blatantly sadistic in their conflation
of sexuality and violence.
In a culture that creates public space for commercial
exploitation of sexuality, practices widespread occupational gender discrimination,
and provides “women only” commuter rail carriages during rush hour as well
as hentai warning notices to protect women from assault, the stakes and
cultural politics of sexuality and gender may assume different proportions.
It might also be important to remain alert to the fetishistic possibilities
of Orientalist myths as factors contributing to the popularity of J-Horror
in Western markets. The prominence of women as victims and avengers
in horror constitutes a potential nexus for several enduring fantasy stereotypes.
Japanese films are given prominence in this essay
due to their current acknowledged commercial and artistic success as well
as substantial influence on other cinemas. If the slasher film has
recently sustained the horror genre in Hollywood, as film author Jim Harper
has suggested, might this reflect fundamental differences in the Japanese
and Western realization of horror oeuvres? The Korean film critic
Chang-soo Pae certainly thinks so, and observes, "For Japanese, the real
horror lies not in mindless butchering of bodies, but in the psyche of
human beings. And the directors of the genre there know how to take
advantage of that to really get under the viewers' skin."
